RIVERSIDE – (INT) - New research published by scientists at UC Riverside on “fear memory” could lead to the development of therapies that reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Animals develop adaptive fear responses to dangerous situations, requiring coordinated neural activity in three brain areas connected to one another. A disruption of this process leads to generalized fear in PTSD, which affects 7 percent of the U.S. population.

Researchers Jun-Hyeong Cho and Woong Bin Kim have now found that a population of neurons can efficiently convey information to the brain areas to encode and retrieve fear memory for a context associated with an aversive event.